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The Belbury Files
The Belbury Files is a 2000 computer game developed by Hypnotix and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive. The game is based on the Halloween Gang series of books by Elliot Strange and serves as a prequel to a pilot for its television adaptation The Halloween Kids. Most prints of the game included a copy of Belbury and You, a personal app that included a life planner, address book, some built in mini-games, a password saver, a calendar and a personal journal, and also contained screensavers. The game was pulled from shelves after Route 90 Publishing, then the owner of the Halloween Gang, threatened to sue Simon & Schuster over using the brand. As a result, it has become quite rare. Development The game was developed by Hypnotix and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive. Strange had contracted Simon & Schuster to rerelease the Halloween Gang series of books after he broke ties with Route 90. While working on the Halloween Kids pilot, Strange wanted to create a game to preface it. The game contains animated cutscenes which were done by Mercury Filmworks and Studio B Productions. Interestingly, both studios would aid in production on the show. Gameplay The game is a top-down explorer. You have a choice between moving with your mouse or the arrow keys. When you're inside any area, the gameplay changes to that of a point-and-click interface. In order to progress, you need to interact with certain people and find certain clues regarding the urban legend you're investigating. When you get enough clues, you'll get insight to where the source of the legend is, and you have to do a minigame to catch them. Plot Jupiter Slaatsky, along with her family, move to Belbury, a small town plagued with urban legends. Jupiter seeks to investigate each of them in order to gain approval from a group who're interested in them as well. There're ten cases overall. The Flushing Flounderer Someone had been breaking into various houses just to use the toilet. Jupiter gets insight that the state is shutting down water for most homes due to tax issues. She attempts to shut down the water to all but one of the houses in the neighborhood to lure the perpetrator. After setting up a series of traps, Jupiter finds that the culprit is a young boy who's water had been shut off, and he felt too embarrassed to ask others to use the bathroom. The Token Hogs A family went to a 24 hour carnival and never came back. Jupiter goes to the carnival and hears complains from most goers over losing tokens and prizes to a family. After bribing a girl with a giant teddy bear and getting a soda for a woman, Jupiter gets insight to a weird bunch. Jupiter then runs a few errands for the ticket vendor and learns of a family that never checked out after arriving the day the park launched. She leads them to the bumper cars and subdues them by running them off the course. The family reveals that they've been at the park for years and took a vow to not leave until they got rid of all their tickets, but due to their luck at the games they were never able to rid themselves of tokens. Category:PC Games Category:Computer games Category:Mac Games Category:PC/Mac Games